Music Covers You Like Better Than The Original

[Guerrero]

This is, of course, very subjective, but sometimes a clever cover comes along that makes you say, "That was better than the original." List some of your favorites here:

"Take on Me": Reel Big Fish > A-Ha
The staccato horn section gets me every time
(the song that got this whole train started in my head; I introduced the RBF version to Younger Offspring, and every time we hear any version of this song, we agree about this assessment).

"With a Little Help From My Friends": Joe Cocker > The Beatles
The entire change in sound, and the background singers

(honorable mention)
"Wonderwall": Ryan Adams >= Oasis
I go back and forth on this one. The RA version is totally "emo", but it gets me in "the feels" (as the kids say) sometimes.

[P30]

I like these covers:

Red Hot Chilli Pipers: The Way It Is (Original by Bruce Hornsby)

Alex Goot + Chad Sugg: Save Tonight (Eagle Eye Cherry)

Whiskey Myers: Rolling Stone (not a cover but probably inspired by Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone")

Psycho Chor: The Lion Sleeps Tonight (The Tokens)

[mtnbkr]

Hurt by Johnny Cash (originally NIN)
Whiskey In The Jar by Metallica (by multiple other artists)

There are others, but those two come to mind immediately.

Chris

[P30]

Also

One (U2)
Redemption Day (Sheryl Crow)

by Johnny Cash.

In the YT comments I read:

If you take a song of another band and improve it, you're a good musician.
If you take a U2 song and improve it, you're Johnny Cash.

[Flamingo]

One cover song that I think that is presented in a totally different way and is better for it is:



Alien Ant Farm Smooth Criminal > Michael Jackson Smooth Criminal

[Clusterfrack]

Everything covered by Tim Armstrong

Anything originally performed by the Beatles.

Ring of Fire by Wall of Voodoo.

[Tensaw]

Gin and Juice - Snoop Dog redone by The Gourds.

[Tabasco]

No Doubt "It's My Life" by Talk Talk (1984).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR8v-Y_UFd0

Shiny Toy Guns "Major Tom" by Peter Schlling (1983)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0JB2JDxU_0

[feudist]

Glen Campbell's cover of "Yesterday, When I Was Young"
Kathy Mattea's cover of "Going Gone.
Linda Ronstadt sang nothing but covers in the 70s, and owned them all.
Whitney elevated all her covers, especially "All the Man I Need"
One particular cover, "These Days" by Glen Campbell, was written by Jackson Browne when he was sixteen. He also did a fine rendition years later, but Campbell covered it at the very end of his life, after his Alzheimer's diagnosis. It added a poignancy that Browne simply didn't have access to.

[OfficeCat]

100 percent agreement on Joe Cocker's cover of With a Little Help From My Friends. Takes an annoyIngly glib little throwaway ditty and imbues it with so much heavy emotion.

Another one from that era: Jimi Hendrix's version of Dylan's All Along the Watchtower. If I remember correctly even Dylan acknowledged that Hendrix's version was superior.

Because I came of age in the 80s: Naked Eyes' version of Always Something There to Remind Me and Soft Cell's Tainted Love will always be the definitive versions for me.

Something more recent: Sturgill Simpson's country version of Nirvana's In Bloom. So diferent that the first time I heard it I was going crazy trying to recall the original version. I knew it was a cover but I couldn't get Nirvana into my head. Had to google the lyrics.

That one reminds me if a time in my former life as a journalist when I interviewed the country singer and songwriter Bill Anderson. Having done my research, I remarked on his reputation as a songwriter for other performers and asked him about his favorite covers of his work. He mentioned a couple from recent stars I was not familiar with but said the best was James Brown's version of his signature song, Still. He said that just blew him away and that it's the mark of a true genius to take someone else's work and transform it like that, to hear something in it that its creator never could have imagined. I thought that showed a lot of class on Bill's part.